THANK YOU Honobono (Newer Thread)

Since most of the threads here are 8-10 years old, I thought I'd make a new one for more recent thank-yous.

Not sure if ANYONE will ever read this, but if, on the off chance, anyone from honobono looks here sometime in the future, just wanted to send out a big THANK YOU for continuing the Hime-chan project. I've been a long-time Hime-chan fan... at one time in the old BBS days, even made contact with Hime-chan fans in Japan (there were some HIme-chan MLs and forums). I remember there was even a "meet up" where fans of the show planned to meet at the park in the town of Kunitachi (the real town that Hime-chan's town is based on) and see if she appears :)

I have the LaserDiscs as well as the DVD (region 2) set.

I look in every once in a while to see if there's a new episode of Hime-chan released by honobono... and enjoy the releases when they're out.

Even though the show is old, it's a great show, and there are lots of us out here who still enjoy it -- and download your episodes when they're released. They are VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!

Just meant to clarify what I wrote above. Japanese fans of the show apparently turned up at Kunitachi's park on the day Hime-chan would have shown up in the future (according to the episode where she thinks about her future) to see if she was there. It's been a while since I've watched that episode so sorry for being hazy on it, but my point was, there was a big fan following for the show (I didn't go... I wasn't in Japan at the time. Would've been fun to go though, and meet everyone).

Anyway, thanks again for continuing. It may be the year 2116 by the time all the episodes are done, but that's okay.. the fact that you keep on going really means a lot.

Personally, I think shows like Hime-chan and Kodocha (both originally on Ribbon) are slightly different in that they're dealing with realistic real-life problems of children/teens, while most of the other anime shows are essentially escapism. I'm not criticizing escapism of typical anime, seeing that visiting a fantastic world from time to time may help you relax, unwind, giving you a necessary recess so that you can face and re-focus on reality. Escapism is not necessarily bad, if used right.

That said, I find HCR rather refreshing - it's essentially realistic, sometimes even gritty; even though it is often corny too, and even though it is not always successful, this show was attempting something rather unusual, something very creative. For one thing, Himeko and Erika are voiced by the same voice actress, which is interesting to say the least.

At the same time this is obviously one of those magical girl shows :) It's charming and sentimental in a good way. I think the original manga was influenced by Tokimeki Tonight (also on Ribbon). So much so, sometimes I almost call Hibino-san "Kamiya-san" unconsciously. But like I said, HCR is a more realistic, bitter-sweet, youth story, while Tokimeki Tonight is a pure fantasy story, a cute vampire-kind of thing, hilarious, and for younger children. So it's not like HCR is a copycat.

Anyway, as for our project, currently we don't have enough free editors for this show. Most of our old releases were edited by Coolgurl, but she had to quit for real-life reasons. The current main editor of HCR, Pokota, is a devoted fan of the show (as you can guess from his nick); however, he seems to be quite busy nowadays. We have a good encoder for this, so encoding is not a problem. Also, translation is not a big problem either, partly because our subs are based on the subs by Tomodachi, and so basically everything has been already translated. Still, since we're updating their scripts and revising many lines, we do need a good editor, and that's the main reason why we're being so slow now. I hope the situation will somehow change and things will be better in the near future. Anyone who can edit or quality-check, can help. Also, probably it's not such a good idea that we're doing several shows at the same time, when we're just a small group. If we were doing only one show (e.g. HCR), things would be obviously faster.

Good news is, we now have a new member (timer/typesetter for Gyu!). Because of this, Gyu! is now a little faster, which may indirectly make other projects a little faster too.